


surely the summer is far from over

by pyrophane



Category: PRISTIN (Band), SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: A Beachfront Wedding (But Not Theirs), Ambiguous Relationships, Canon Compliant, F/M, Future Fic, Light Pining, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 13:22:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20026516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrophane/pseuds/pyrophane
Summary: It was too late. He’d seen her. Nayoung watched the startled glow of recognition unfold over his face. Absurdly, she found herself reaching up to smooth her hair. She winced, retracted her hand.“Nayoung,” Seungcheol said, halfway to the inflection of a question mark, like he wasn’t sure if he had the right to surprise. “What’re you—I didn’t know you were—you’re here too?”





	surely the summer is far from over

**Author's Note:**

> excited to finally post something for the original and most beloved tinhet!!! ty to everyone in the gc for organising and participating <3 i love you all 
> 
> operates under the assumption that nayoung will redebut as an idol in another group #nayoung_jobfulness #nayoung_employment [SEEDING]... this was supposed to be inspired by somehow - day6 (_time passed like that/and suddenly, without knowing/i escaped from you/and now i’m standing here alone_) but i definitely went way off-prompt T__T it's probably overkill to have a playlist for a fic under 3k but nonetheless for optional listening: [show me your empire of loneliness](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3oB5uXwlyG9Xt1Rtrhuk0I?si=DxrejwPcQcWGAOudHbaHtg)
> 
> title from 打上花火 - daoko & 米津玄師

To see you again, isn’t love revision?  
It could have gone so many ways.

—_ One Love Story, Eight Takes,_ Brenda Shaughnessy

The wedding itself had been out on the shore, just metres away from the light teal edge of the water. Somehow Nayoung hadn’t realised a beach wedding meant she’d be _at the beach_ and she’d worn stiletto heels, totally inappropriate footwear for walking on sand. Any predicted inclement weather had graciously held off during the ceremony, translucent blue skies and open sunlight that carried no heat, probably as close to ideal as it was possible to get. Truthfully, she hadn’t been expecting an invitation at all—Minji was a friend from university, though not an especially close one, and, a little touched, Nayoung had accepted. But none of the friends they’d had in common had been able to make it and Nayoung sat unaccompanied as the hours trickled down.

The reception was being held in a canopied tent just off the beach, the walls little more than drapes of white fabric. If she listened carefully she could make out the muted rhythmic wash of the ocean against the sand, like a far-off heartbeat. Almost enough to lull her into drowsiness. Right before she started microsleeping in her chair, she glanced up, blinked, and registered two facts in quick succession.

One: Choi Seungcheol was also at the reception.

Two: Choi Seungcheol was walking towards her.

On reflex she stood up. She hadn’t seen him at the ceremony, but she also hadn’t been looking for her—former coworker? Fellow ex-leader? Old acquaintance? Person she still couldn’t think of without the ghost of the vine of longing wrapping itself snakelike around her throat?

He hadn’t noticed her yet, but he would soon if she didn’t figure out a plan of action within the next few seconds. She could duck underneath the table. If this had been an award ceremony or some official function years ago—if Minkyung were here she’d laugh and shake her head but she’d still shift her body to hide Nayoung from sight, blithely cover for her. But Nayoung was here alone, frozen in indecision as Seungcheol kept moving in her direction.

It was too late. He’d seen her. Nayoung watched the startled glow of recognition unfold over his face. Absurdly, she found herself reaching up to smooth her hair. She winced, retracted her hand. 

“Nayoung,” Seungcheol said, halfway to the inflection of a question mark, like he wasn’t sure if he had the right to surprise. “What’re you—I didn’t know you were—you’re here too?” 

Apparently Seungcheol was here because he was a second or third cousin of the bride’s, or something like that. “It’s a small world,” Nayoung said faintly.

“Right,” Seungcheol said, still looking vaguely stunned. “Wow. Um—you look. Really good.”

Siyeon had videocalled her earlier in the morning to help her pick out the dress she was wearing. “Thanks,” she said, flattening a hand along the side of the burgundy chiffon skirt. She hoped she did not sound as miserable as she felt. “You too.”

He shifted. The discomfort lay so close to the surface under his skin. In some kind of attempt to compensate, Nayoung held herself even stiller. Deep, careful breaths from the diaphragm, just the way the dance instructors had taught her. Unease was not a good look on anyone, but Seungcheol had always been so transparent. She wasn’t sure what kind of expression she was wearing. No doubt something horrifically telling. 

“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” Seungcheol was saying.

“You mean here?”

He shook his head, seemed to change his mind halfway, and shrugged. “Yeah. Sure. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Yes…” She couldn’t think of anything else to say that wasn't embarrassingly trite or overly personal. She was so badly out of practice, off-balance.

He looked at her. She looked at him. He bit his lip, probably frustrated with the conversational impasse; she was feeling the same, acutely. Then he smiled. The vine around her neck sprouted thorns.

“Want to get out of here?” he said.

I can’t. We can’t. It would be unthinkably rude. We spent half our lives learning how to give, accommodate, team first, image first, think about how it looks from the outside, that’s not something you just shake off. 

But tonight she wasn’t Im Nayoung, three times an idol. Just Im Nayoung, attending an old classmate’s wedding by herself, nursing the dregs of an overgrown crush she should have shed a decade ago. 

“Please,” she said fervently.

Outside, the sun had set but the sky was still light enough to make out the colour of the water. Swells of deep glassy green, translucent near the crests, the precise shade of the jade bangle the bride had been wearing. There were only a few other people out on the beach. She and Seungcheol walked down the concrete pavement winding along the back of the sand, away from the light and music leaking out into the evening. 

“I didn’t see you at the wedding, earlier,” Nayoung said.

“Ah, yeah,” Seungcheol said. “I couldn’t make it to the ceremony, I had a radio thing… that’s why I was late to the reception too, but I said I was going to come. So I had to come.”

“And then you left. The moment you arrived.”

“Hey, I _did_ show up, didn’t I! Besides, it’s worth it for the company.” He slid her a conspiratorial grin.

“I’m flattered,” Nayoung said dryly. 

Seungcheol hummed. They walked side by side for a while in silence, accompanied by the rolling whisper of the waves. Then he spoke again. “You still keep in contact?” 

There was only one thing he could be talking about. “Do you?”

“Can I be honest?” Nayoung nodded. “It’s hard,” he said. “Harder than I thought it would be.”

“It is,” she said, thinking of three dormant group chats she still found herself checking every now and again, just in case she’d missed a notification. Old habits, and all. Everyone had their own lives, no longer tied together by the closeness of circumstance, and she’d expected it but she’d hoped things would somehow turn out different for her, regardless. “First you were always together, and now everyone’s scattered.”

“I guess it feels worse because we used to be the leaders,” Seungcheol said. 

The unhappiness on his face dismayed her. “Do you remember the practice room in the old Pledis building, the one with the light that kept flickering but nobody ever came to fix it,” Nayoung said, all in a rush. “One time I’d been rehearsing something in there all afternoon and you came in and handed me a bottle of water and said I’d worked hard. I never thanked you properly for that, but it really…” She’d veered wildly off topic. “That’s why I always knew you’d be a good leader,” she finished. “And you were.”

When she told Minkyung, sometime after midnight and muffled into a pillow in their dorm, the other girl had teasingly called Nayoung _mercenary_, but it wasn’t like she went around falling in love with every boy who offered her hydration. _No, just the one,_ Minkyung said, and patted her shoulder when Nayoung tried to smother herself with the pillow. It was the first time she’d even acknowledged it out loud. What a strange lightness there was, in the articulation.

In some ways it was easier to have nothing and want everything than to have something and still want more. Back then debut had been a far-off dream made a little less unattainable with each hour she spent in the practice rooms, the net of promises she’d made to herself and to her family and to the girls that might be her bandmates in the future closing around that dream, hauling it hand over hand towards shore. And she’d lived it three times over, hadn’t she? Ambition tempered by responsibility weathered itself into guilt. 

“I remember,” Seungcheol said slowly. “I didn't think you would.”

“Of course I remembered,” Nayoung said. “It was—very kind of you.” She cringed at the delivery, hurried to rephrase herself. “It meant a lot to me. That you noticed.”

“Anyone would have—_should_ have noticed—”

“You always had a lot of love to give,” she said. “Even when you thought you didn’t.” She gripped her elbows, conscious of the wind bristling over her exposed forearms. She hadn’t thought about the cooler air by the ocean, had left her coat slung over the back of her seat. “But I’m sure you’ve heard that enough times.”

“Not from you,” he said. 

She glanced at him, sharply. His face, always so earnest, shone in the reflected light. The simplicity of the expression had been impossible to meet when they’d been younger and the interval since then had only barely sanded down the edges of that difficulty.

But already he was shrugging off his blazer jacket, holding it out in an offer. She hesitated, then took it, mumbled her thanks. The silk lining lay warm against her bare skin. 

“Now you’ll be cold, though,” she said, aiming for light concern.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. He flashed her a smile, eyes crinkling. “I’m very cold-resistant. Actually it’s pretty warm out here, even."

As far as Nayoung was aware the opposite was true, or maybe it was just that his tastes in fashion tended towards oversized jackets. He’d never done it with her but from what she’d seen Seungcheol liked to pester his boys for validation, preening under any elicited praise, except then he’d give out quiet kindnesses like this too, deflect the gratitude. That person, so childishly sincere in his care for others. She’d always admired that in him. 

She opened her mouth. “I,” _missed you_, but the words refused to leave her throat.

Even in dreams, even after she’d retired from the spotlight, she’d never been able to bring herself to confess. There was always too much at stake, other people’s dreams as well as her own. But she had nothing to lose, now. She owed it to her teenage self to take the chance, at least just to close the door on the part of her life that swallowed down longing like knives.

She fixed her eyes on the place where their shadows intersected on the sand. “Choi Seungcheol,” she said, steady. Heart like a pane of glass. “I liked you a lot, you know. All those years.” 

Beside her, Seungcheol had gone very still. “You mean.... oh. I… is this a good time to say I really liked you too?”

Her heart jolted. She whirled around to face him. “You—what do you—” 

He was steadily turning red. “You really didn’t notice? I was so obvious… especially when we were training together… I wanted to be close to you all the time, it was so embarrassing!”

“That was on _purpose?_”

“Wait, so you _did_ notice?”

Her cheeks heated up too. “Only because it was you!”

Seungcheol scrubbed a hand over his face. “So all this time we were both—we could have—”

“No,” Nayoung said gently. “We couldn’t have.”

He deflated. She knew he understood; there was nobody better situated to understand than Seungcheol. They couldn’t have, at any point up until the present. They were not the people they were at sixteen, at twenty-two, even twenty-eight. Paths in parallel, then diverging. She never let herself turn to check but the awareness of someone else at her shoulder even at such a distance felt like water cupped in her hands. Five debuts between the two of them. The years in between had not been kind. Still, what were the chances they would find each other again like this, by accident, so far removed from everything that kept them turning away from one another? 

“Tell me it’s not too late,” he said.

Her throat closed. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t do that.”

He nodded, eyes closing. She was standing close enough to him to see the slow sweep of his eyelashes against the skin. Almost without thinking, she reached out and seized his hand. His fingers went slack in surprise, then tightened against hers.

“It’s getting late,” she said. 

“We should head back,” he agreed.

Neither of them moved. The ocean at night was so beautiful it almost hurt to look at it, the dark, satiny curls of water breaking open against white sand. She hadn’t known. Three decades, three debuts, still so much she didn’t know. The terror of the unknown loomed like the low swell of a storm cloud over the horizon. Despite the chill, Seungcheol’s hand was warm.

A fine, powdery dusting of rain had sprung up around them. Nayoung tilted her face upwards to the charcoal sky, blinking away the softness to her field of vision. She’d had to go back for her coat and purse, and they’d done the requisite round of goodbyes and congratulations to the newlyweds, the radiance of their joy infectious. Lightening her heart a little. Seungcheol offered to walk her to the subway and she accepted, not thinking of anything in particular other than prolonging the time they had left before their lives separated out again, shook themselves free.

At the entrance to the subway they both hesitated, glanced at each other, exchanged little rueful smiles at being caught out. Rain glittered in Seungcheol’s hair. She wanted to push a hand through it, see if it was as soft as it looked. She was getting better at that, the wanting, if not yet the enactment. 

“So,” Seungcheol said. He shoved his hands in his pockets. The streetlamps fluoresced over him, nothing like stage lighting at all. Maybe a little like an old, cramped practice room tucked away at the back of the original Pledis building.

“This was—nice,” Nayoung said. Already she was regretting her choice of words. Why was it so hard to say what she meant, when it came to Seungcheol? “I mean, it was good to catch up…” It occurred to her she was still wearing his blazer. She transferred her coat to an arm and started to shrug the blazer off. “Oh—sorry, I didn’t even realise—” 

“Wait,” Seungcheol said. Nayoung’s fingers stilled on the hems of the blazer. “It looks better on you, anyway… hey, pass me that,” and he lifted Nayoung’s coat from her arms. 

“It’ll be way too small on you—”

“It’s fine,” Seungcheol said. He draped the coat over his shoulders, the dove grey fabric bunching and stretching comically across his frame like a cape. “See?”

Nayoung bit back a giggle. “I’m going to need that back eventually,” she warned.

“So we’ll just have to swap back next time,” he said.

“Next time,” Nayoung echoed. A reason to hold herself to a promise. “Okay. Let’s do that.”

“Do you think,” Seungcheol started. Paused. Touched the back of his neck, the tips of his ears flushing. “Do you think we could, like… start over? Pretend we never…” He gestured vaguely. It was, actually, a rather apt way to describe the undefinable decade or so they’d spent stepping around one another on the same path to the same dream, never once touching. 

As it happened, Nayoung knew a thing or two about starting over. It was never as straightforward as it looked on paper. Too much history to clear out. She shook her head, conscious of the rueful curl to her mouth. She said, “I don’t think I want to give it up. Everything that we did. Or didn’t do.”

Poorly concealed hope lit up Seungcheol’s eyes. Even now the expression tugged at something underneath her sternum. “Then—” 

She was leagues away from the girl she’d been when she first stepped into Pledis, unknowing, stars in her mouth, but for a moment the old dream rose up again like a shadow touching another shadow, that surety of want resounding through the chambers of her heart. She could want everything. She could have everything. 

“Don’t be a stranger,” Nayoung said. “You’ve got something of mine, after all. I’m expecting that back.”

The smile that broke out over Seungcheol’s face shocked the breath from her chest. “I’m glad we saw each other again,” he said. 

“So am I,” she said. 

He lifted his hand in acknowledgement or farewell or both. She mirrored the gesture, pulling the borrowed jacket closer around her with her other hand. Then she turned and stepped into the subway. She didn’t look back. She didn’t have to.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on twitter [@juncheolsoo](https://twitter.com/juncheolsoo) / cc [@inheritance](https://curiouscat.me/inheritance)!


End file.
